The present application is related to, and claims priority from, Japanese Patent Application Serial No. Hei. 10-357723, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to portable communication terminals, and particularly to a portable communication terminal having a scrolling character message display.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many conventional portable telephones have the ability to send, receive and display text messages on a liquid crystal display (LCD). However, because the telephones are portable, the display is relatively small and thus the amount of text displayed at one time is typically limited to about 6 characters (in the case of full-size Japanese characters) on 3 lines. Therefore, in the case of a long text message, such displays have been configured to initially display the top three lines on the display section, and then to advance to the next three lines in response to user manipulation of a cursor key. However, manipulation of such displays is cumbersome, as the user must manipulate the cursor key many times in order to read the long character message.
Recently, displays have been introduced in which text messages on the display are scrolled automatically at a predetermined rate. Such scrolling displays enable a lengthy text message to be displayed without requiring the user to manipulate the cursor key as described above.
However, a user may want to slow down the display scroll speed if the speed is too fast or if there is a part of the message that is difficult to read. However, if the scroll speed is fixed as described above, the user is unable to adjust it. As a result, although it is conceivable to allow the user to initially set a preferable scroll display speed, the scroll display speed cannot be changed during display of the character message, thereby resulting in inconvenience to the user.
In addition, the density of the display becomes light due to the reaction speed of the liquid crystal in a smooth scroll LCD. Therefore, although it becomes necessary to enhance the overall display contrast during the scroll display, the overall display quality is lessened, as an active area of the display becomes darker than the surrounding inactive display area, and the boundary between the active and the inactive areas is clearly defined when the display contrast is enhanced.
The present invention overcomes the above-discussed limitations of conventional portable telephone displays by providing a communication terminal with scrolling display that is readily readable by a user, even when a lengthy text message is displayed.
More particularly, the present invention provides a portable communication terminal having a display in which a displayed character message is vertically scrolled. The scroll display speed may be changed by the user as the message is being scrolled based on user commands. Consequently, the user can change the scroll display speed freely while reading the message.
In addition, the display according to the present invention includes a feature that enables the user to pause the scrolling message for a certain period of time each time the scrolling of one line of text is completed. Therefore, the display may be made more readable than a continuously scrolling display. Also, even when the display is an LCD, the display contrast need not be adjusted, as a fully dense display is achieved when the scrolling message is paused.
The communication terminal also includes tactile sensors for changing the scroll display speed when manipulated by the user. The tactile sensors may be located on the terminal at a user holding position to simplify operation.
The specific nature of the invention, as well as other objects, uses and advantages thereof, will clearly appear from the following description and from the following drawings.